No Excuses! – Train your Brain to prefer healthy food.

Finally the Science has proved that our brain can be trained to prefer health food. The scientists at the Tufts University, United States say that it is really possible to train the our brain to prefer healthy food over junk foods that have no nutritional value.

This is possible even in those people who have a well-established unhealthy eating habit. No excuses folks! Till now, It has all along been believed that eating habits once established is difficult to leave behind and start with a healthy diet, which has now turned out to be wrong.

“There is much more research to be done here, involving many more participants, long-term follow-up and investigating more areas of the brain.” -Professor Roberts, Researcher.

To prove their hypothesis, the scientists studied the part of the brain associated with reward and addiction in 13 overweight and obese individuals comprising men and women. The participants were split into two groups for the study, with one group of eight put on a special diet containing high proportions of protein and fibre while the other group continued on their usual diet. The researchers however took care not to allow the control group to get hungry. At the end of the six-month programme, the researchers made a MRI scan and compared the same with the ones taken prior to the control period. The researchers then discovered that there was a change in the brain’s reward area.

The control group showed a marked preference for healthy food over unhealthy ones after being shown pictures that included both junk and healthy foods. This is the evidence that the brain has been trained to prefer healthier foods.